


Unquiet Dreams

by bluntblade



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/F, Late Night Conversations, Lesbian Rey (Star Wars), Not Canon Compliant - The Rise of Skywalker, Not Reylo, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:13:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22136872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluntblade/pseuds/bluntblade
Summary: Months after Crait, Kaydel's beginning to learn that sharing a bed with Rey means sharing a bundle of troubled dreams. Follows loosely on from Of Crait, Conscience and Consequence.
Relationships: Kaydel Ko Connix/Rey, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey & Luke Skywalker
Comments: 6
Kudos: 18





	Unquiet Dreams

Kaydel woke groggily to find Rey sat up, pouring over one of the old Jedi tomes in the half-light. The Falcon rattled a little around them - it never seemed to be silent.

She glanced over at the clock and scowled, then reached up and squeezed Rey’s arm, startling her. “You know you can just say you need to talk, right?”

Rey didn’t quite meet her eyes. “I just thought I’d try and get some studying done, seeing as I couldn’t-”

"Rey." Kaydel leaned back and raised an eyebrow. “You’re reading a book in an ancient dialect on lightsaber construction at three in the morning. Forgive me for doubting that you’re taking any of that in, right now.”

Rey shot her a look in reply, but nodded and put the book down. 

Kaydel smiled at her encouragingly. “Now, just come back down…” and Rey nestled in opposite her. Kaydel took her chin between fingers and thumb. “Dreams, Rey?”

It felt odd to take dreams so seriously, but with a Jedi things were... different. Having spent years trying to wring stories about Luke Skywalker out of General Leia, that much had already been clear to Kaydel. 

Added to that, Rey’s introduction to the Force hadn’t been so much a matter of first steps as a cliff-dive. Stories had followed her after the Starkiller and then Crait. Some of them had even turned out to be true. When she sought Kaydel out a few weeks later, and bridged her mind to hers, she’d shared some of the tumult she’d gone through. And since then, much more.

A Jedi’s sleep, it seemed, was forever at the mercy of the Force’s tides. From what Rey said, it was all turbulence these days, and one thing was forever looming, somewhere just past the horizon...

“Ren,” Rey whispered.

Ah, yes. Strictly speaking, Kylo Ren loomed on the horizon for everyone in the Resistance. Kaydel had even seen him, from a distance, on the torn salt plains. Supreme Leader of the First Order, the tyrant who would have his will imposed on the entire Galaxy. But for Rey, it was altogether more personal on so many levels.

He had hunted and captured her, then mauled Finn in front of her, murdered Han Solo and done his best to seize her again for his master. Which would seem to be more than enough baggage. But it was after that that things got really complicated, with the bond which Snoke had somehow crafted between their minds. Rey still struggled to articulate what it had been like, and the emotions around their fleeting alliance.

The crushing disappointment that she had failed to change him, on the other hand, was crystal clear.

“I thought there was a lost boy underneath the monster, when I was on Ach-To. I thought… I could tunnel in, take Ben Solo by the hand and bring him out of the dark but… that’s not how this works. He killed Snoke, but he chose the throne over saving the Resistance ships.” She looked into Kaydel’s eyes. “He was willing to let all of you die, and that's when I realised: Ben Solo and Kylo Ren are one and the same.”

Kaydel nodded. “There’s no one else in your head, ready to take the reins and absolve you. But we want to believe it, especially if we empathise with them, or start to care...” That wasn’t a comfortable thought.

Rey took Kaydel’s fingers from her chin, and pressed them to her lips. “Don’t start fretting that you’ve got competition from a villain, Del. I still don’t even know what that bond really was. Closer to brother and sister, maybe - the only other person I knew with the same stuff running through him. Who seemed as confused and alone as me.”

“How did Luke fit into that?”

“He was something else entirely. I miss him,” she said plaintively. “Luke knew Kylo, knew what he'd created, so much better than I realised. Kriff, I was so ready to find a hero in exile, and not ready at all for the man I did find. I couldn't really appreciate his wisdom before he was gone.” Her face scrunched up just a little. “There are ways to commune with the old Jedi, according to the texts, but I'm not there. It's just me and the echoes.”

That was something Kaydel hadn't heard from Rey before. “Echoes?”

“I severed the link on Crait,” Rey replied. “But I didn't do it cleanly, it's splintery. Now and again I get something… bleeding through.”

“You see things? Hear them?" She dropped her voice to a whisper. "Ren?”

Rey shook her head. “Not since Crait. Now it's just the occasional, vague feeling.”

“What do you feel from him?”

_ What is he off the battlefield?  _ She wondered. What did the interior life of a Supreme Leader look like?  _ Does he drink? Screw? Stars, does he feel something when we... _

“Anger, mostly,” said Rey, jolting Kaydel out of her speculation. “It's like this searing heat, but you don't feel it long enough to burn.” Her expression became distant, but her voice shook. “But I know the burning’s real. Ships, cities, worlds. Kylo, Ben, whatever you call him he's out there, and he's swimming in blood. And I feel it.”

Kaydel couldn't stop a little gasp escaping her lips, and felt for Rey's hands. “Rey, I never knew.”

“I know, Del. It's...”

“Horribly hard to talk about?”

“Yes. And I know that I'll need to face him, sooner or later. It can only end with one of us dead.”

Kaydel hated when talk got to this kind of territory, but she'd been in the Resistance long enough to know they were in this to the end. And for Rey's sake, she couldn’t in good conscience leave the matter there. “Do you think he’d ever surrender?”

“We'd need to win the war for that,” Rey pointed out. “But even then, I don't think he can go anywhere but down. He’s digging a void in his own soul, so he can throw up bigger walls around it. He’s trying to conquer everything outside himself, and he can’t see that the battle's within him. Or rather it was - he'll never know true peace and control, he'll be fighting forever for something that he won't get that way.”

Kaydel stroked Rey’s cheek. “Then we'll give him a real battle soon, all of us and the people we’ll rally, and we’ll stop him. Him and the First Order, for the Galaxy's sake. Actually I forgot to say," she added, forcing a smile, "someone in engineering wants you to look at some shock-feeds they pulled off a salvage haul. Could give your staff a real kick, though I guess it's nothing on a new saber.”

Rey smiled. “That sounds good, Del. You're right though, a new lightsaber will be a lot handier.”

Kaydel returned the smile. “And we’ll sort that soon too. Just leave the technical stuff for the daytime, OK?”

“OK.” And then, quietly, “Thanks Kaydel.”

Kaydel kissed her. “You're welcome. Just try for a couple more hours now.”


End file.
